


Bildungsroman

by YurikoNeko (AlaxxisSade)



Series: KKM: Someday We Will Get There [11]
Category: Kyou Kara Maou!
Genre: Action/Adventure, Cousins, Extremely OC-centric, Gen, Original Character(s), POV Original Character, Read at Your Own Risk
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-07-21
Updated: 2016-07-21
Packaged: 2018-07-25 19:13:04
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,120
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7544569
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AlaxxisSade/pseuds/YurikoNeko
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The title means 'coming-of-age story'. There, I saved you the Google effort.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Bildungsroman

**Author's Note:**

> So I wrote this, debated on whether to post it, and just left it around for months... Whatever, this is straying further and further from the canon, but enjoy more Shinri and Julie!

In that village deep within the mountains, there came one evening a pair of strange travelers. No one could tell if they were just children or already adults, whether they were human or mazoku. At the most, the villagers knew that they were one boy and one girl.

                “I am so terribly sorry to be of trouble…”

                “Ah, it’s fine.” The kind woman led them back to her modest farm, though her eyes couldn’t keep completely away from the sword on her sudden guest’s belt. “Your friend looks exhausted, did you come far?”

                “In a sense,” the young stranger sighed. “Never mind him, he’s just a wimp.”

                And you’re awfully strong for a lady. The woman was sure she hadn’t imagined the deep callouses on the girl’s hand when she first helped her up. Those were hands that grew up holding the sword.

                After a simple dinner of bread and cheese that once more had the girl thanking and apologizing profusely, the two strangers retired to the barn. As soon as the barn doors closed behind them, the boy, who had barely looked up and hadn’t spoken a word since they entered the village, was tossed unceremoniously into the hay.

              “Hey, you still alive? Tell me if you aren’t, because the last thing we want to do to such a kind lady is curse her barn.”

                “…Something’s not right here, Julie.”

                Julie rolled her eyes. “What makes you say so?”

                “When I teleported us, I set two conditions. One, it had to be out of Shin Makoku. Two, it mustn’t be boring.” Shinri buried his face into the hay. “This feels boring.”

                “Maybe your majutsu failed?”

                “It used up half a year of my life force. It can’t have failed.”

                Julie sat down in the hay next to him, sighing for what felt like the twentieth time that day. “Tell me again why I agreed to do this. I should be at home with Mother now, blowing the candles on my birthday cake.”

                “I waited for you all these months, and this is the thanks I get? You were the one who insisted on coming along.”

                “Because I knew this would happen!” She jabbed an accusing finger into his face. “Use your maryoku one more time and we’re going home, got it?”

                “We just got out…”

                “Exactly! His Majesty agreed to let you go for a trip to celebrate your coming-of-age, not to let you use up your lifespan like a paper candle!” Julie grabbed a fistful of his hair.

                “Hey hey hey, cut that out!”

                “Just look! Look! You have even more white hair now! Soon you’ll be as grey as Lord von Christ, and you’ll break his heart.”

                Everyone in the kingdom knew the old man had a real thing for black hair, which was, unfortunately for Shinri, an extremely rare commodity in the kingdom. Even his mother was always telling him to take care of it, until he had to resist the urge to just shave it all off.

                “So? I think the salt-and-pepper look goes well with me.”

                Julie had run out of breaths to sigh.

                “Aw, come on, Jules. How many chances will we get to travel like this?”

                “Not a lot, since you’ll die before you turn twenty.”

                “Now you’re just exaggerating.” Shinri didn’t get a response for a while, so he put his arms behind his head and stared at the high ceiling. His cousin had gone extremely still beside him, which probably meant she was furiously holding back tears again. He didn’t understand it, actually. Everyone always got a lot more upset over it than he did.

                He was going to die young anyway, so he might as well have fun doing it.

                “Don’t worry, I’ll make sure to go for your wedding first before I croak.”

                Julie turned away her head and smiled bitterly. This cousin of hers, sometimes he was terrifyingly sharp, and at other times he was still just a child.

                “You’re a bane to women everywhere.”

                First his sister, now her… None of the women around him were going to go anywhere while he was still around, and it was all his fault, whether he meant it or not. Thank goodness Greta-neesan escaped while she still could.

                “I take offense to that. I’m the perfect gentleman.”

                “On the surface, maybe. I feel bad for His Majesty and Uncle Wolfram. I bet they still don’t know where they went wrong.” She got to her feet, brushing the hay off her legs.

                “You know Dad doesn’t like you calling him His Majesty any more than he likes your father doing it.”

                “At least I can say I got it from my father. The only thing you got from His Majesty is his black hair.” She walked steadily towards the barn door, drawing her sword. “Stay right there, you hear me?”

                At times like this, her tongue could be as sharp as her mother’s, but the shape of her back looked exactly like Lord Conrart Weller. It was a back meant to be looked up to, one that protected.

                Outside the barn, the village was under siege.

                It seemed like a herd of mountain boar had descended on the village like a plague. Julie had seen this species in Lady Anissina’s textbooks, and knew that they were generally peaceful, but those tusks could do some real damage when they panicked. Already some of the men in the village were being pulled away from the scene, their sides gored and bloody.

                Julie frowned, ever so slightly. She never had maryoku, or the deft hands and patience required for learning medicine. What she did have, however, was the sword in her hand.

                It was unfortunate, but the boars were already half-crazed and frothing at the mouth. At least the villagers wouldn’t have to worry about meat for a few months.

                The young half-human, half-mazoku girl who just turned sixteen that day, began a one-sided massacre in a foreign country. Her ponytail, now more brown than orange, was all her prey could see before their eyes went dark. Her own eyes were ones used to, over the generations, striking fear on the battlefield. But her fighting stance was firmer than her mother’s, and more flexible than her father’s. It was strange, but it was always when she fought like this that Shinri, watching calmly from behind the barn doors, remembered that she was a girl after all.

                It was like a dance, but also like the determined march of a seasoned soldier, advancing forth through enemy ranks to protect those behind.

                The villagers were her awestruck audience, their screams of fear and chaos dying down completely as one by one she pierced the boars cleanly through their skulls. To them she must have looked like an angel of death. Shinri knew that deep down, she never liked killing like this, even if her victims were animals and not human. Her heart had always been soft, just as her sword had always been heartless.

                When the last of the boars fell with a frustrated roar, she swung the blood off her sword and released a long breath. The first of the villagers had only begun to cheer, however, before she raised her sword again.

                “It’s not over.”

                The two cousins spoke in unison, though only those closest to Julie could hear her, and no one paid any attention to Shinri at all. Both of them grew up on Anissina’s textbooks, after all, so they both knew—

                These boars were generally peaceful, but they were particularly terrified of fire.

                There hadn’t been any signs of a forest fire, and one lone torch or campfire would have scared some, but not the entire herd. Which meant—

                Julie tightened her grip around her sword as the first flashes of steel reflecting firelight appeared from between the trees.

                Bandits.

                “Well, at least this isn’t boring,” Julie muttered under her breath. And then, at the top of her voice, “Everyone, get inside and lock the doors! Especially you, cousin!”

                The ghost of a smile that was playing on Shinri’s lips turned to a grimace. He had thick skin, but even he had to blush when the eyes of an entire village of strangers bore into him with sympathy and contempt. One of the younger boys even turned his nose up at him, “Shame on you, having a girl protect you.”

                Idiot, Shinri smiled as a vein throbbed in his temple. She’s protecting all of us, which includes you.

                He had half a mind to throw the brat out into the battle, especially seeing the villagers’ hesitation. It was only natural, since anyone with a brain and a semi-decent heart wouldn’t feel good about leaving a young girl alone to face a dozen bandits, no matter how skilled she was with a sword. Shinri considered it briefly, but eventually decided this wasn’t the time to joke around.

                “You heard her. Get in here, and trust her. You’ll only get in her way.”

                So maybe she couldn’t take on twenty zombies on her own, like her father did. But Shinri never once forgot that she was raised as a spy as well as a soldier.

                She slipped into the shadows, and seemed to reappear behind the bandit leader.

                The bandits were dealt with even faster and more precisely than the boars. With the animals, she was reluctant to cause any more pain than necessary, and sought to end every life with one blow. With the criminals… Well, they could live without a limb or two. It was a strange mix of stealth and brute hacking.

                “…Tch.” As soon as the last bandit hit the ground, Julie’s senses told her someone else was approaching, with even bigger numbers. The mountain wasn’t big enough, nor the village wealthy enough to bring any more bandits than she already took down, so the newcomers must be this country’s authorities.

                In a way, the good guys would be pose even more trouble to them than another team of bandits.

                “We’re lea--” She kicked open the barn door and froze in her tracks. Shinri looked up from the man he was healing with a weak, pale-as-chalk smile.

                “Now, now, you don’t expect me to just let them bleed out, do you?”

                “You--!” Her eyes, brown flecked with silver, darted around the barn. It seemed like the whole village was in here, and he had somehow managed to heal them all in the short time she took outside. She almost said something irresponsible like, ‘that’s exactly what you should have done’, but bit her tongue when she caught the gloating gleam in Shinri’s eyes. Never mind, she had another bone to pick with him.

                “You did something to the air outside, didn’t you!? Those bandits were moving so slowly even a child could have hit them!”

                “All I did was increase the water vapor density in the air around them a little, they still looked plenty fast to me.”

                These people weren’t human. By now the villagers were sure of it. Especially the girl-- Although she hadn’t used any maryoku, that just meant she might not be mazoku. If she was neither mazoku nor shinzoku, they would sooner believe she was a goddess of war descended from the sky than think she was human like them.

                “P-please, since you saved us… Could you at the very least tell us your names?”

                Julie looked at them sideways, her previous polish of politeness rubbed away by the bloodshed and her cousin to reveal a somewhat colder nature. It was Shinri instead who threw his arm around her and beamed at the villagers so brightly it blinded them.

                “This is my cousin Julian, and my name is Wilfred. Of course, we helped you without hoping for anything in return, but…”

                “…Is there anything in particular we can help you with?”

                His emerald eyes twinkled with a craftiness neither of his parents had, but would look familiar under a pair of glasses.

                “What’s the shortest way out of this mountain?”

 

When Lady Flynn arrived in that village among the mountains, she found that she was already too late. And she would only be the first of many.

                After that, for an entire year, their spectacular deeds would crop up here and there, spanning the entire continent. Exactly a year later, on Julie’s 17th birthday, she would carry him back into Blood Pledge Castle, where they would both be held under house arrest for many more years to come.

                But despite all that, the legend of the girl super soldier and her wizard apprentice sidekick lived on amongst the human village children for centuries.

 

P.S. Greta even wrote a book about it.

**Author's Note:**

> So yeah, I finally couldn't resist, and there goes the perfect 10 for this series... 11 is such a strange number, I might actually do one more just to make it 12. Nah, the truth is I'm more than a bit fond of this series, so I'm always looking for excuses to write more, but the canon purist in me is balking, sigh. If anyone has any requests, though, I'd surely have an excuse-- I mean, a reason to do more :333


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